Feeding the world’s growing population
New Zealand’s reputation as a quality food producer is growing.
The Fertiliser Association of New Zealand promotes and encourages responsible and scientifically-based nutrient management.
Action for Healthy Waterways Submission
In October, the Association made a submission to the Ministry for the Environment on Action for Healthy Waterways. We welcome the Government's aspirations and call for the Government to take a pragmatic, phased and balanced approach to achieving these goals.
"Aligning environmental, social, cultural and economic objectives should be the first step," says Vera Power, Chief Executive of the Fertiliser Association.
The Association considers it is important for the Government to align its regulatory schemes with the environmental assurance schemes that the market is already providing. This will ensure that New Zealand farmers can capture a market premium for their environmental performance.
The fertiliser industry is committed to achieving better water quality outcomes and has been working with others in the agriculture sector to reduce the adverse impacts on the environment. The adjustment is significant so the Government will need to better phase the workload for the farming sector between now and 2025.
"There is evidence that some farmers may be able to achieve lower nutrient leaching while maintaining or even enhancing their economic performance. We propose that the Government helps to kick start this gain by supporting farmers with targeted advice."
"It is also important that farmers get consistent advice for both tackling water quality and greenhouse gas emissions," says Vera.
"Farm environment plans should consider both water quality and greenhouse gas emissions when determining actions that farmers should take."
The Association considers the Government needs to be careful to avoid inadvertently trapping people in existing land uses. The Government is proposing that farmers and growers who wish to change into certain land uses, will be required to demonstrate that they will not increase nitrogen, phosphate, sediment or microbial losses. This would preclude land use shifts that would improve overall ecosystem health, but increase one of these measures. It would be more appropriate to require farmers to demonstrate that their land use change will not damage ecosystem health.
The Association supports the principle of Te Mana o te Wai, as a holistic approach to water quality management, rather than as a hierarchy for decision making.
"We think it is important that the changes preserve regional flexibility to set water quality targets by catchment to balance environmental, social, cultural and economic impacts. It reasonable to identify high priority catchments, but these should not be selected based on a single metric." "As individual catchment conditions vary significantly, it is important that regional councils set targets based on individual catchments requirements, rather than applying a national number," says Vera.
Finally, in situations where nitrogen losses must be reduced, it is most appropriate to drive improvements through good management practices in the first instance. This allows the decision maker to better match the action required from farmers with the action needed to restore the water way. It also avoids punishing farmers for taking action before the regulations were introduced.
The below infographic summarises FANZ's key messages.
